After a long rest

2014 USMS South Central Zone Meet

This weekend is our South Central Zone meet at the Woodlands pool just north of Houston. This meet is special for me because I had four other team mates competing at the meet and my daughter came with me to the meet. We had a good drive down yesterday afternoon and I had a nice swim before we left and another after we arrived.

1650 free
Last night I swam the mile and used the fact that I had not swum a USMS mile before to enter a NT and swam at 6pm in lane 5, heat 1. There were 10 heats and the last heat did not start until almost 9pm even with two pools being used to speed the meet up. I swam my own race and felt pretty good through about 800 and the pain build from there. I held it together pretty good and finished with 17:29.92. This was not as fast as I had hoped but still not a bad time at all.

500 free
Today we had warm up at 8am and the meet started at 9am with the 500 being the first event of the day. I knew this was going to be a real race between Steve Unruh and I and that's exactly how it turned out. I swam from the front the whole way but Steve was no more than half a body length back the whole way. I knew he was going to pick it up the last 150 so made sure I had enough left to pick it up also. We both went under 5mins with my final time being 4:58.92. This was not as fast as I went shaved and tapered for USAS in January but was a really good in season time for me. I really enjoyed the race and was very happy I evened the score with Steve after he beat me at the SMU meet last month. I suspect we will have some more great races over the next few years.

200 back
Despite warming down well after the mile and the 500 I was very tired and sore before this race. I was seeded 4th but ended up 2nd in the heat and 1st in my age group. The time of 2.06.83 was not that special, but I was happy with the splits which were 30,32,32,32. I think I will swim this event more next year and with some work on my turns I think I have a lot of room for improvement.

Tomorrow I have the 200 free and the 1000 free. There are about 6 guys entered under 1.50 on the 200 free so this is likely to be a very fast race. I am seeded first on the 1000 and hope to have a fast race. If I swim close to the time I did in January in the USAS meet I will get close to the zone record of 10:24.

------ Update on Day 3

I had a pretty horrid day 3 of this meet. My daughter got sick on Saturday, with a fever and a stomach ache. I woke up on Sunday morning with my stomach in knots and had to spend most of the gap between the warm up and the 200 free in the bathroom. I erroneously decided to swim the 200 but without getting into any nasty details at 135 my stomach did a twist and knotted and at 150 I knew I needed to get out and head back to the restroom, unfortunately I flipped and had pushed off and had to get to 175 inorder to get out, which I did without really embarrassing myself but only just. On the offical record it was a DQ but reality was it was a DNF. I tried rehydrating and decided to swim the 1000 but more to just stretch out. I ended up going about 10.32 and negative split it pretty big, and actually by the end felt much better.

I can honestly say that this was not only a masters first but a life time first, with a DNF, and almost another very nasty first, but I wont go there!!! Its a shame because I was feeling pretty good and the guys I was with all went under 1.50 so I believe I would have been between 1.48-1.50, but alas it was not meant to be.

Comments

Awesome two days. I'll pass along my thanks to you, too, for evening your score with Steve Watch out for him, though, in that 200 and the 1000: I remember when he tore up the pool in Mesa from the 50 up to the 1000 - crazy speed and crazy endurance.

I was in the final heat; we started somewhere around 8:00. Despite the late start I was still able to swim a PB and beat my tech suit time from 2010. On the other hand, I really needed more time to recover for the 500 on Saturday morning. This has become more of a factor as I age. Perhaps the meet director would consider seeding either the 1650 or the 1000 fastest to slowest next year.